Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Mountain Boy Minerals Ltd. (TSX-V: MTB)(OTCQB: MBYMF)(Frankfurt: M9UA) CEO Lawrence Roulston on Gold-Silver-Base Metal Discovery Potential at Flagship American Creek Project — Plus Five Additional Projects — in British Columbia’s Prolific Golden Triangle

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Mountain Boy Minerals — Mr. Lawrence Roulston. Lawrence, how are you today?

Lawrence Roulston: I'm great and thank you so much for taking an interest in Mountain Boy. We've got an exciting story and looking forward to sharing it.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, we try to be selective in the companies that we work with. We love exploration stories that have clean share structures, experienced management, preferably in great jurisdictions, and preferably with some prior work done that points to a potential multibagger in the space — and Mountain Boy clicks every single one of those boxes. 

I want to get into the share structure; I want to get into the project. But before we do that, I think it's important just to provide a bit of your background because we talked a bit off air. You've been in the space for quite a bit, and I think that experience is going to come in handy with the bull cycle in precious metals that we all see coming.

Lawrence Roulston: Yeah, forty years in the industry. I've got a geological background. I started with one of the majors, and then I was involved in managing juniors for many years. For 15 years, I wrote an investment newsletter. And now, I'm back doing what I really love doing, which is exploration — the treasure hunt! 

It's a fun place to be and especially with this company and all of the projects we've got on-the-go and being located in such a great location.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get into the team that you've been able to put together, Lawrence, that has come together because it's a very experienced one. It's a successful one. It's one that I am very familiar with. 

And I think when we talk exploration and how exciting that can be, it really comes down to share structure and team before I look at anything else. And both of those are rock solid with Mountain Boy. Can you walk us through, briefly, Mark [Brown] and Winnie [Wong] and Ben's [Whiting] experience a bit?

Lawrence Roulston: Well, Mark has been around the industry for a very long time. I've known Mark going way, way back. Great guy, highly respected in the industry, great experience, had some big successes. Winnie, who works with Mark and is our CFO, gained tremendous experience in the mining industry; brings a lot of value with the experience that she has. 

And Ben Whiting, another of our directors… a lot of experience in the mining industry; had a couple of big successes. He's involved in another company that's in the same general region that Mountain Boy is operating. So he certainly understands the rocks up there and has been very helpful in guiding us through the exploration process. 

So a great team on that side. I've got a couple of other directors that bring up a huge amount of business experience and government contacts. So great, great team on the director side.

Lucia Theny, our VP Exploration; geologist with a lot of experience and, in particular, a lot of experience in the Golden Triangle. So she really knows the rocks up there and has been an extraordinarily valuable part of our team. 

Andrew Wilkins, a geologist, and, in addition to being an expert geologist, is tremendous at finding his way around on steep rock bases, which is a tremendous skill in the Golden Triangle. So he's been able to get at some of the places that nobody previously has gotten to and helping us to get a really good story, geologically, on the various projects that we're involved in. 

So I'm excited to be part of this team. And then, there's the whole team of geologists in the field that are out there right now, as we speak, trudging around up and down the mountainsides. So yes, a great team!

Gerardo Del Real: They're trudging around British Columbia in the Golden Triangle looking for silver, gold, and copper discoveries, right, and you mentioned the multiple projects. Can we talk about the focus in the near-term? 

You have an abundance of data, decades worth, that you've been able to draw from, process, reinterpret and now really kind of target and vector into what everyone is hoping… a year of discoveries. Can we talk about the focus in the near-term, Lawrence?

Lawrence Roulston: Well, our flagship is the American Creek Project. It's focused on the historic Mountain Boy Mine which, of course, is where the company gets its name. It operated in the early-1900s. It was one of the more famous mines in the Stewart Camp in the Golden Triangle. And, as you say, an enormous amount of information accumulated over a century of production and exploration. 

Before I got involved in the company, the focus was just immediately around the old mine, and it was a fairly limited property position. So the first thing I did was put the team to work to compile, assemble, interpret information on the old mine and the area all around it. We then went off and we extended the property to a fairly large property position. And now, we're looking at it from a much bigger picture perspective.

Now, I like to use the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle. And a lot of work was done in the Golden Triangle over decades. And for a lot of people going in, it's like picking up one piece of a jigsaw puzzle. You look at it and it doesn't mean a whole lot. But you start getting a few pieces that fit together. Eventually, you start to see the big picture. 

And that's where we are now with the American Creek Project… and with our other projects… that we pull together the bits and pieces of information that were compiled from work that was done over a period of decades — and we're seeing this big picture. 

So the focus is American Creek centered on the Mountain Boy Mine; spectacular high-grade silver mine. There was some drilling done in 2006; six holes intersected more than a kilo of silver over at least a meter…  

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, that's incredible… 

Lawrence Roulston: …yes, one of those holes; five kilos of silver over five meters. So there's something there of real significance, and we're now at a point where the drilling is about to get started again. 

We've learned a lot over the last three years. In particular, we learned a lot last summer. And it's been clear for a long time that there's a major set of veins running north-south. 

And what we learned from the work last year is that the ore shoots are really a function of a cross-cutting feature where now we've identified the cross-cutting feature and we're interpreting where it runs and how to hit that intersection point where we believe the ore shoot is going to extend off from that known high-grade zone. 

So that will be the focus of the initial part of our drilling this summer.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned the summer. When in the summer do you anticipate the truth machine to actually start turning there?

Lawrence Roulston: Within a couple of weeks. 

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent!

Lawrence Roulston: It's logistics-dependent. There's still snow in the high country so they're monitoring it daily. And in fact, the crew has actually gone off to one of our other projects where they've got access to some lower areas. They're up there right now. 

And once they get back and reassess the situation… we want to get drilling as soon as we possibly can because — if we see the results that we're anticipating — we'd like to expand the program, extend it, and even get more drill rigs on-site. 

A big difference from last year is that this year we have an XRF device on-site, and we'll be monitoring that drill core as it comes out of the ground. It'll give us a good first approximation of the metal content as that drill core is coming out of the ground.

Gerardo Del Real: The rocks, the projects, and the team have attracted the attention of Mr. Eric Sprott. You just recently closed a C$3.25 million financing. How does the treasury look? And then, I'd love to get into the share structure a little bit. I love to see insider ownership right around the 20% mark; show skin-in-the-game. 

The bottom line is — it's exploration. We know it's high-risk. It's also very high-reward. But you’ve got to have skin-in-the-game. If you don't believe in your own projects, right, it's a big leap of faith asking other people to. So I love to see that, Lawrence.

Lawrence Roulston: Yeah, our treasury at the moment is good for this season. If we didn't raise any further money, we can do the work on five of our projects that we have laid out in front of us. 

If we get results and we want to ramp up the program, then, hopefully, those results will be reflected in the share price and we can finance accordingly. As you say, 20%; in fact, it's well over 20% between the whole management team right now. And about 54 million outstanding; 64 million fully diluted. So we're in good shape to kick off this year's program.

Gerardo Del Real: We've both seen several cycles. We know what a discovery of significance can do to a company's market cap, which your market cap currently stands at right around the C$11 million mark. 

We know how quickly that can go from double-digits to triple-digits. I'm excited for the drills to turn. I'm looking forward to the initial assays. Anything else that you want to touch on, Lawrence?

Lawrence Roulston: Well, we have five other projects that are in our portfolio. We'll be working on at least four of those this year; some really, really, really important projects. 

We don't want to distract attention from the American Creek Project — our flagship. But bear in mind that there's really six shots at a major discovery in this company with what we have on-the-go at the moment. 

All of those projects have benefited from decades of previous work. It's the same story on all of the projects where we've looked across the Golden Triangle… we've identified areas that have been overlooked where we can see a lot of really interesting results and work that was done previously. 

We've pulled together that historic information; we've compiled it, evaluated it, and we see some very, very high potential exploration projects. But all of that's in the background to the American Creek Project which is where we're going to be focused for the bulk of this season.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, for anyone that wants to get to know the rest of the projects and a little bit more about American Creek, you can go to www.mountainboyminerals.ca. 

Lawrence, I am looking forward to having you back on and excited to see the initial set of results. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it!

Lawrence Roulston: Appreciate you and your interest in the company.

Gerardo Del Real: Alright, chat soon. Thank you.

Lawrence Roulston: Okay, bye.